


Stitching Time

by slightly_ajar



Series: Domesticities [3]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Found Family, Friendship, One Shot, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 13:06:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18315845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightly_ajar/pseuds/slightly_ajar
Summary: The team travel back from a mission.  Jack reveals a surprising talent.Jack pointed at Mac. “Zip it, chuckles, you’re just jealous of my many and varied complexities”Part of my Domesticities series of one shots based around little domestic moments.





	Stitching Time

The banter the team had been sharing, the jokes that had been tossed, parried and returned faded into companionable silence as their adrenalin slowly ebbed away. The hum of the Phoenix jet’s engines rumbled in the background and the lights in the cabin were turned low with the night sky a black cloudless expanse outside the windows. 

Mac, Jack, Riley and Bozer slumped gently into their seats, slipping into soft, unfocused ease as they left the demands of their mission behind. Jack stretched out his legs and his right knee gave a satisfying pop. 

The op had been gruelling. 

It had brought kidnapped sisters, terrified parents, an unachievable ransom demand and the terribly real possibility of failure. But it had ended well, with arrests, tearful reunions and the knowledge that they had truly helped someone. 

That was why they did what they did. They were part of the Phoenix Foundation to help. To protect. To fix things that were unjust and unfair. Seeing the results of the long days and even longer nights that came with their jobs, like watching two little girls being cradled safely in their parent’s arms, was always welcome. 

During the brief but frenzied final scuffle one of the bad guys had grabbed Riley. She’d floored him with a kick from her heavy soled boot and an elbow to a soft part of his anatomy and as he’d fallen his grip on her arms had pulled a button from her shirt loose. She was absently picking at the dangling thread on her sleeve as she stared out of her windows at the sky. The moon was bright and almost full and she wondered how long it would take for Jack to say something about how it was ‘No moon, it’s a space station!’ or for Mac to come out with a fact about one of the Apollo missions. She’d once made a joke about the conspiracy theories that the moon landings had been faked and Mac had been so distraught that she hadn’t had the heart to say anything like that again. “But…but the number of people who would have had to lie!” He’d stammered, eyes wide and troubled, “and the flag moved,” he swayed an arm backward and forwards, “because there was no air drag to slow down the motion caused by the astronauts hanging it on the stand!” It had taken a full five minutes of reassurance that yes, she did believe that the astronauts had really stood on the lunar surface before he calmed down. 

“That will fall off if you don’t leave it alone.” Jack told her, watching her tug at the button. 

“Probably,” Riley replied. She pulled it again and the thread came away from the fabric with a sharp snap. She held up the small, red button between her fingers, its broken thread swaying gently, “You were right.” 

“You should have listened to me. Why does no one listen to me?” Jack held up a hand and looked heavenwards in a plea for enlightenment, “It’s my curse.” 

“I thought your curse was your inability to turn off your appeal to women, even when you want to.” Bozer called. “Like that time in the karaoke bar with the woman whose boyfriend’s neck was thicker than his head.” 

“That’s my curse too Boze, it is possible to have more the one curse, I’m a complicated man.” 

“Complicated?” Bozer’s eyebrows rose as Mac snorted a low huff of amusement. 

Jack pointed at Mac. “Zip it, chuckles, you’re just jealous of my many and varied complexities” 

“Your complexities?” Mac gave a lop-sided smirk. “Is that what you’re calling them now?” 

“I’ll have you know that I am fully complex, nuanced and intrinsic.” Jack pointed a finger up, jerking it from side to side to emphasise each adjective. 

“Intrinsic?” Mac’s forehead creased. “Do you mean intricate?” 

“That too.” Jack sat up, gesturing to Riley with both hands. “Give it to me, I’ll fix it.” 

“What?” 

“Your shirt.” Jack spoke with exaggerated patience, as if he was explaining a simple fact to someone who was either very young or very stupid. “Pass me your shirt and I will fix the button that you’ve just pulled off.” 

Riley took off her shirt and the short sleeves of the T shirt she was wearing underneath showed the finger shaped bruises left on her arm by the man who had grabbed her. Jack gritted his teeth at the sight of them. If the punch-faced knucklehead who’d caused them wasn’t in custody Jack would have tracked the man down and fed him his own teeth for leaving marks on his little girl. 

“We have needles and thread around here don’t we?” Jack swallowed around the rage gathering in his throat, “Mac, you’ve stashed a sewing kit around here somewhere, right? 

“Yeah, it’s…” Mac heaved himself out of his seat with a grunt and walked to the cabinet by the door to the cockpit. He rifled through the drawers, pushing aside three mechanical pencils, a collection of CDs, a roll of duct tape and a Furby, “…here.” He threw a small bag up in Jack’s direction. “Catch.” 

Bozer stared at the items Mac was shoving back into the drawer as Jack caught the sewing kit. “Is that a Furby?” 

Mac turned the toy over in his hands and poked at it with a finger. “There’s actually a lot of tech in a Furby and they can be used as recording device with a bit of tweaking. All the things in this cupboard can be useful if you know what you’re doing.” 

Bozer’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “Does everything in there have creepy rolling eyes and a shrill voice like a forest pixie of Satan?” 

“No,” Mac said, laughing as he lowered himself back into his seat, “just the Furby.” 

Harrumphing, Bozer glared at the closed drawer. “I don’t know if I can relax knowing that thing is in there. Listening. Plotting. Waiting.” He gave a theatrical shudder. 

“I’ll tell you what,” Riley offered, “if that thing goes rouge and attacks I promise I will put myself between you and it. I’m confident I could take that fuzzy little freak down.” 

“I appreciate that Riley. You’re a good friend.” 

“Anytime, Boze,” Riley reached over and gave Bozer a friendly smack on the arm, “anytime.” 

Jack cut of a length of thread the same colour as Riley’s shirt from one of the bobbins in the bag. Ordinarily he would have joined in with teasing Bozer but he didn’t like the weird little toy either. The Furby was a robot, a little one that jabbered and was covered with neon fluff, but big or small, fuzz or no fuzz, a robot was a robot and they made Jack nervous. He held a sewing needle up and expertly threaded the cotton through the eye of the needle on his first attempt. He wasn’t sure who to thank more for his accuracy, his sniper training or his mama’s sewing lessons. 

“So Jack,” Riley said as she watched him push the needle into the fabric of her shirt and draw the thread through with careful precision, “you can sew. I have questions.” 

“My mom taught both me and my sister how to. Mama Dalton couldn’t let her children go out into the world not knowing basic skills like how to change a tire, grill a steak and fix a seam.” Jack felt a smile grow at the warm memory of his mother, her hands planted on her hips, insisting that he needed to know how to take care of himself. ‘What kind mother would I be if I let you leave home not knowing how to keep yourself healthy and decent?’ She would say, ‘You need to be able to look after yourself, Jacky, there’ll be plenty of times when there’ll be no one else to do it for you.’ “She taught both me and my sister all the same things, how to make bread, how to take out a splinter and how to sew. She said I needed to know all that stuff because the best kind of woman isn’t going to bother with a slack jawed man who expects her to act like his momma.” 

“Your mom sounds awesome.” Riley said. 

“She is. Awesome and full of practical knowledge that you best listen to when she offers it.” Jack focused on the needle and thread in his hand as he talked, each stitch he made fastened the button more securely to Riley’s shirt. There was something meditative about the simple, repetitive action and Jack felt jitters of the post mission come down recede. 

He secured the button with one final stitch and cut away the unused thread. “All done. Here,” he threw the shirt back to Riley, “good as new.” 

Riley put her shirt back on and examined the newly attached button, pulling on it to test the strength of the stitches. “You’ve done a good job of this Jack I’m impressed. You’ve been holding out on us, what other secret skills do you have?” 

Jack tapped his nose with a finger conspiratorially. “That would be telling. But I can tell you that they are many and varied. Like I said, I’m complicated.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are welcomed, loved and adored. 
> 
> If you would like to come and say hello on Tumblr I’m there as [Sky-larking](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sky-larking)
> 
>  
> 
> I can’t sew at all but I feel confident that Jack can, and I find the idea of Jack patiently making neat little stitches to fix a seam or reattach a button completely adorable. 
> 
> I googled Furbies as I was writing this to make sure that I’d remembered them correctly and it according to Wikipedia the National Security Association in America banned them from being brought into NSA buildings because they were worried they could be used as recording devices. The ban was eventually withdrawn but it was subsequently found that the microphone in a Furby can be accessed remotely via a Bluetooth device and used to record voices. Furbies as a method of international espionage, who knew?


End file.
